


Companion

by KakumeiNoHi



Series: The Stories of Winter and her Partner [20]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, and some winter/oc fluff at the end, schnee semblance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29295660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KakumeiNoHi/pseuds/KakumeiNoHi
Summary: Winter was sitting on her bed. She winced as she stood up to lock her door and properly change. She wasn’t going to go anywhere for at least the rest of the day.She had played strong earlier and kept up her posture but now that she was at rest in her room the adrenaline had dropped and the pain started to set in instead.Winter also refused to take pain killers. She was too scared of what could happen if she were to start a habit like this. And so she would now feel the sting of her broken ribs everytime she moved too quickly or took too deep of a breath.Klein had been with her until a few moments ago to bandage her and patch up the bruises that were hidden underneath her clothes. Thankfully so, otherwise Jacques would have used them as an excuse to keep her from finally going to Atlas Academy.
Relationships: Winter Schnee/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Stories of Winter and her Partner [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914799
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Companion

**Author's Note:**

> I caught some inspiration from a Tumblr Post :) Volume 08 has me once again all enthralled, folks.
> 
> https://sirianhewigxiii.tumblr.com/post/642503599570731008/so-about-weisss-new-summon-its-strange-right
> 
> (the link contains spoilers for V8 Chapter 08, the story however doesn't contain anything V8-related, so no worries :) )

Winter was sitting on her bed. She winced as she stood up to lock her door and properly change. She wasn’t going to go anywhere for at least the rest of the day.

She had played strong earlier and kept up her posture but now that she was at rest in her room the adrenaline had dropped and the pain started to set in instead.

Winter also refused to take pain killers. She was too scared of what could happen if she were to start a habit like this. And so she would now feel the sting of her broken ribs everytime she moved too quickly or took too deep of a breath.

Klein had been with her until a few moments ago to bandage her and patch up the bruises that were hidden underneath her clothes. Thankfully so, otherwise Jacques would have used them as an excuse to keep her from finally going to Atlas Academy.

She had just passed his ‘test’ after getting into a huge argument with him the evening before.

\----------------

Winter had turned 17 some time ago and it was time for her to announce that she was going to sign up for proper combat training. Jacques, of course, had other plans for her and wasn’t willing loosen what grip he had on her.

What was she trying to accomplish by going there? She was the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. What did she think she was doing by lowering herself to do something as ‘uncivilized and filthy’ as physical combat?  
He had tolerated her wanting to ‘play around with swords’ but this was going too far. And she couldn’t possibly believe that she was actually good enough and capable of standing a chance against any real opponents, let alone proper Grimm.

After all of the training Winter had put herself through on her own, with Jacques only placing obstacles in her way and trying to interfere, she had snapped at him.

“Then how about I go and get those swords and we see how well _you_ can do in a fight?”

“Don’t you dare talking to me like that, girl!”

He had raised his hand to lunge out but Winter was not going to budge on this and take it.

She conjured a glyph right underneath him. He stopped immediately and Winter could see slight fear in his eyes. After all he truly couldn’t be sure about whether or not she was bluffing and Winter was sure that he still remembered the ice wall in his office, the repair bill and half of the staff being out on sick leaves because of colds after having to deal with it.

“Very well.” He glared at her.

“You will get your chance to prove yourself in the morning. And I’ll make sure you see how pointless whatever it is your trying to do here is.”

Winter had only glared back at him. She dissolved her glyph and turned around to leave his office and slam the door behind herself.

\----------------

The next morning she had been taken to one of the company buildings and made to face Grimm that had been illegally kept in cages for some unimaginable reason even Winter as the heiress was never told about.  
And as much as she disapproved of the creatures being held in nothing but cages inside of these buildings in the middle of Atlas City, they were the only chance at proper fighting she had had so far.

But even though she may have fought one or two in the past before, she was now told that these had been ‘only weaker ones that were send at her to humor her’.

Winter wasn’t naive enough to believe those words. She knew very well how all of the Grimm she had faced so far had been agitated in some kind of way beforehand, so they would be even more aggressive towards her. She knew that Jacques had made sure to try and do his best to break her any chance he would get.

This time around however she was offered a deal.

One that she would have never been offered if Jacques wasn’t an overconfident windbag who thought very little to nothing of his own daughter who he had been trying to groom into a perfect copy of him.  
She at least _looked_ close enough to him after all, even though she wasn’t a boy. But she already had the natural white hair of a Schnee and it was even the same shade his was turning into. She could keep her mother’s eyes, it not like he could change that anyway. All in all she may not be perfect, but she had to do as his heiress and he was going to _make_ her perfect.

Winter’s eyes had narrowed as she was standing inside of a locked and secured hall, listening to what was told to her through loud speakers.

If she managed to defeat all of the Grimm she was going to face now, Jacques would be willing to let her go to Atlas Academy. But he seriously doubted that she could do that and not get herself almost killed trying.

But maybe this was the lesson she needed to finally grow up and stop play-pretending to be a Huntress.

And so, inside of a mid-sized hall, that didn’t leave her that much room to move around in, Winter had started to fight and dodge her way through packs of Beowolves.

She had defeated the first pack and several minutes passed in silence, before a second pack had been sent in. She had clenched her jaw.

Clearly Jacques hadn’t expected her to get through the first wave and needed the time to have a second pack prepared and sent in. It seemed like today he was even more determined to break her than usual.

Winter tightened her grip around her swords and she had continued to fight. She had been running low on aura when she had finished the second wave but she had no time to recover – a third wave was already being send in.

Jacques really was trying today, she gave him that. Still,...

_These have to be the last ones._

Winter was sure that the building’s storage wasn’t big enough to possibly store even more Beowolves or other Grimm.

And luckily enough it truly seemed like Jacques had simply run out of Grimm to send after her afterwards.  
As the last Beowolf fell, Winter heard the giant door unlock and she had walked out and into the small hallway that would lead into the rest of the building.

She knew that there were no cameras in here and she allowed herself to break for a few moments.  
She was completely out of breath and holding it in while she had been inside of the hall, knowing that Jacques was looking down at her from the armored glass window at the top of the hall.

When Winter had stepped outside and made her way towards the room she had been watched from, she was met halfway by Jacques who was already on his way out to leave the building.

“You’ll see soon enough where this will get you in the end. I’ll give you a month before you’ll crawl back again.”

Winter glared at him. She was still holding her swords and she watched him flinch a little as she twitched one of them at him.

Jacques Schnee was coward. It had been a long time since she was last scared of him and his threats and she wasn’t going to start now.  
Not after she had just taken down waves of Grimm. Not after what she had just done. On her own, using her own strength.

Winter didn’t need his support or approval in the end. For her sake and for the sake of Weiss and Whitley she was going to keep doing this on her own.

She was going to show them how being a Schnee didn’t mean being dependent on Jacques and following his world view.

She was going to succeed and make sure that her two siblings could watch her and follow up knowing that it was possible to keep going without the Schnee name Jacques had stolen from them.

\----------------

Winter once more winced in pain as she put on her pajamas. Since she already had enough trouble moving there was no way she was going to wear a nightgown. She also wasn’t going to leave her room today and changing into lounge-wear only to change into sleepwear later would have been painful. Literally.

Actually she might be spending the entirety of tomorrow in her room as well.

While he had also praised her for doing well and finally archiving one of her goals after she had been back in her room and called for him, Klein’s lecture afterwards had been harsh enough to keep her from pacing around in her room and already starting to pack up everything she needed to leave the manor for Atlas Academy soon.

Klein knew that she didn’t want to show any weakness in front of Jacques but she should have at least had one of the doctors look at her immediately after he had left and not wait until she was back at the manor first. There was a limit to how stubborn she should be about things.

Winter had tried to soften him up by telling him that he was the only she trusted in patching her up. And while this had been the absolute truth and he had stopped reprimanding her afterwards, Klein still had put on the compresses and bandages maybe a little less gently than he actually could have.

Winter finished buttoning up her top. She stood by her bed and looked around her room.

Soon she was going to leave this place. She might have to come back every once on a while in the beginning but soon she would be secure enough to leave and never come back.

Suddenly she was conscious about how empty her room felt.

Yes, she had a big bed, large closet, a desk and even a table with a few chairs, but if a stranger was to walk into it there was nothing in here that would make them think ‘Oh, yeah. This is Winter’s room.’

Weiss had a few stuffed animals and fairytale books in her room. Whitley had a few selected toys, Jacques had allowed after their mother Willow had fought to get them for him.

Winter’s room however had nothing of the sort. It was a room like any other guest room in the manor and even the books she had were basic textbooks or references that had been there from the beginning.  
Anything she needed and wanted to know about Winter would simply look and read up on her scroll. It was one of the few things Jacques actually couldn’t get access to unless he would hack into it, since she was able to make sure of how secure it was once she had gotten it.

Winter knew that he wouldn’t risk having a stranger look into her scroll and find something possibly compromising to be used as blackmail against the company and she also knew that he wasn’t smart enough to hack into it himself. Winter sighed.

She should be ecstatic about finally being able to leave and going to Atlas Academy, but alone in the silence of her room it almost seemed unreal. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it and for some reason something felt missing.

Her mind blank and feeling empty Winter stood next to her bed for a few more minutes until she decided to shake it off and do what she would always do when she felt lost.

She stretched out her arm and conjured a glyph to try and hold it as long as she could. For as long as her aura would allow her, Winter would try and concentrate on her glyph.  
She had only promised Klein to not move around after all and her glyphs only required her concentration.  
In her room Winter would also sometimes conjure more than one glyph or several rows just to see how far and long she can go. It had always given her something to focus on and she wouldn’t feel just as trapped as she had in the past.

Training like this she had also figured out how to infuse her glyphs with dust. She had however also figured out that it wasn’t really her style.

Furthermore after having once left her door open by accident and been caught and heavily reprimanded by Klein about how she could have easily set her entire room and herself on fire training in her room like this, Winter figured that she would stick to only sometimes using gravity dust and maybe some ice dust to boost her natural ice constructs.

And she _really_ didn’t want to practice using fire dust in the courtyard after all, as Klein had suggested instead. She didn’t want to risk being seen failing while trying out something new.

As Winter was looking at her current glyph on the floor, her mind started to wander to only a few hours ago when she had fought all of those Beowolves.

She was specifically remembering the last one she had taken out, how it had taken a swipe at her and hit her against a wall hard enough to break her aura, how it had looked her in the eyes while it disintegrated.  
She knew that it was only a Grimm. It didn’t have feelings or a soul. But to some extend she couldn’t help but to feel a little grateful towards it. After all its demise was what was allowing her to take another step towards her independence.

Her glyph started to suddenly change and Winter’s eyes widened as she still keep concentrating on this new form she seemed to have unlocked.

Cold air started to swirl around her room and Winter watched a white creature with a blueish tint rise up from her glyph. And it took her a few moments to realize that it was a Beowolf.

_Summoning your fallen foes._

Distant words her grandfather had told her a long time ago came to Winter’s mind. This must have been what he was talking about and this was also probably one of the things he hadn’t been able to show her due to his fading health.

Winter looked at the Beowolf which was now in front of her and had gotten on all fours.

She didn’t really know what do to and therefore she decided to simply stand still as it started to move closer towards her. There was no way it would hurt her, right? She was the one who summoned it after all, right? Then again there are Semblances that would hurt their owners out there.

Winter tensed up as the Beowolf stopped in front of her and stood up on its rear legs.

She was looking straight up into blue Beowolf eyes when it suddenly lowered its snout to nudge it against her forehead. The Beowolf puffed a little and then it simply lowered its head to nuzzle it against hers.

Stunned Winter slowly raised her hand and she very carefully started to pet its head. She sighed a broken sigh.

That’s right. This was her companion now. Her trusted ally who would be by her side and accompany her from now on. A friend. She wasn’t going to be completely on her own.

Winter’s legs started to give in and she slowly lowered herself to sit on the floor. Her face was buried in her hands as she was rubbing away the tension when her Beowolf also lowered himself to all fours and moved behind her to curl around his new master so she could rest her back on him.

\----------------  
\----------------  
\----------------

Winter had just taken a shower, put on some fresh clothes and come back into her room at Atlas Academy.

Her partner was sitting in her top bunk reading. While Cassie would freely claim Winter’s bed to nap on even when Winter wasn’t around to sit with her or busy on her desk, for some reason whenever she was reading Cassie preferred doing so in her own bed.

Winter didn’t really think that there was some deeper meaning behind it other than Cassie perhaps just wanting some ‘me time’ whenever she was reading or she maybe just wanted to give Winter some space sometimes.

On weekends Cassie would also occasionally stay up later than Winter if she was especially enthralled by what she was reading and since her Faunus eyes allowed her to read in the dark without needing any night-lights or damaging her eyes, she also didn’t mind turning the lights off for Winter to sleep.

Winter leaned against the bathroom doorway as she continued to simply look at her partner. Her love. Her dearest friend and companion.

This companion of hers however had one very big difference to Winter’s very first companion who had comforted her. She was warmer.

She also had her own strength to keep her going and for Winter to rely on. She could always come to her side and Winter could always see her, even when she herself was exhausted or weakened.

Winter started to walk towards the beds and once she was close enough she conjured a small glyph to step on and she raised herself high enough to climb into her partner’s bed.

Cassie had only hummed a little at her and opened her arms as Winter moved to sit sideways between her legs, so she wouldn’t be in the way of her reading and snuggle against her.

Her partner chuckled.

“Welcome to the top bunk.”

Now that she was thinking about it this really was the first time Winter was actually completely in her partner’s bed – usually when they had cuddled it had been on Winter’s lower bunk and Winter had at best sat on the edge of the top bunk to wake up her partner.

“You don’t mind, right? You can still keep reading if you want to. I won’t be a bother. I just want to...”

She hadn’t done much thinking when she joined her partner, but now that she was conscious about what she had done, Winter was getting a little shy and nervous. She stopped mid-sentence, tensed up and lowered her head.

Even after all the time they had spend together, Winter still couldn’t help but to feel a little insecure about her relationship with her partner sometimes. Not because she didn’t trust her partner, but because she simply couldn’t believe that what she had with her was actually always within her reach.

Cassie pulled her closer with one arm and placed a kiss on her head.

“You can always come and just cuddle, Winter.”

She placed another kiss on her head and with her arm around Winter’s back and her hand on her waist, she continued reading, holding her book in her other one.

And as she would every so often feel her partner’s hand moving and drawing circles on her back, Winter took a deep breath and started to relaxed into her.

Cassie nuzzled her head a little against hers a little to place a soft kiss on her temple and Winter sighed a little.

She really wasn’t all alone after all.


End file.
